talking done as fast as possible. 'And when Wren Hamil’s body was found-' she checked her computer pad '- eighteen months ago, she was …’wearing’ the finger of a woman named Prinna Meg. Wish we could say Prinna Meg was the first victim, but we can’t. She was wearing the finger of another person. Someone we haven’t identified yet.'
'The bruises-'
'Body’s covered with them. Medical examiner will tell us more.'
'Who found her?' Ara asked. She felt as if she weren’t quite there, like the world around her wasn’t real.
'Boyfriend,' Tan rasped. 'Came over to pick her up for dinner and found her like that. My partner’s questioning him. Back deck.'
'Do you suspect him?'
'Not seriously. Medical examiner’s on her way, but I did a prelim scan. Looks like Temm’s been dead an hour, maybe two. I registered heightened levels of psytonin in her brain. Means she was probably in the Dream when she died, just like Prinna Meg and Wren Hamil. Then we called you.'
What had Ara been doing two hours ago? Sitting at her desk on the ship filling out a report on the recent buy while the four slaves that were the subject of the report slept the sleep of the exhausted in their cabins. At one point Ara had looked in on them and found Willa tossing restlessly on her mattress. Jeren, in contrast, slept so soundly that Ara had to look carefully to see his breathing. Kendi and Kite snored in the bunks above him. All while a Silent sister was being murdered in the Dream.
'Where’s her dermospray?' Ara asked. 'I didn’t see it on the couch.' It sounded to Ara like her own voice was coming from far away.
'Bagged and tagged,' Tan told her. 'Possible evidence.'
'Time, Araceil,' Melthine interrupted. 'The Dream will move on.'
Ara started and came to herself. 'Of course, Grandfather. Is there a bedroom I can use?'
'Whole house is a crime scene,' Tan said dubiously. 'You just want a place to lie down, right?'
'Yes.'
'Bed should be okay, then. We already checked it.'
Tan escorted Ara into Iris Temm’s bedroom, a small but comfortable place containing a double bed, high dresser, and two bedside tables that didn’t match. The curtains were drawn in this room, making it feel gloomy. Ara lay down gingerly on the bed. It smelled faintly of bath powder.
'Need anything?' Tan asked.
'Just some quiet. I’ll let you know what I find.'
'I’m joining you,' Tan said. 'Now that I can find you in the Dream.'
'Yes, all right.' Ara shut her eyes. 'Just give me a few minutes to find Iris’s turf. It’ll be easier without another Silent mind around.'
Tan took the hint, for Ara heard retreating footsteps and the sound of the bedroom door shutting. Ara took out her dermospray, pressed it to her upper arm, and thumbed the release. With a
It was the Dream.
Ara looked down. Her body felt perfectly solid and normal, as did the ground beneath her feet. This, she knew, was an illusion created by her own subconscious. Each particle of the earth she stood on, every molecule of air she breathed, was actually a sentient mind. Although every mind in the universe created the unconscious gestalt of the Dream, only the Silent could actually enter and use it. The whispers Ara heard were other Silent also in the Dream. If Ara desired, she could reach out to one or more of them, call to them.
The Silent could also sculpt the Dream into whatever environment they desired. Usually Ara chose a pleasure garden, complete with fruit trees, musical fountains, and sweet-smelling flowers. The flat plain was merely the default. This time Ara left it as it was.
Iris Temm and three other Children of Irfan had died while they were in the Dream, and the police were assuming they had been attacked and murdered there. Even the greenest student of the Children knew that injuries in the Dream were visited on the real-world body and that very few Silent had the concentration or strength to resist these psychosomatic wounds. Death by accident was not unknown in the Dream, but there was the matter of the substitute fingers. There was nothing accidental in this particular case.
The difficulty lay in the Dream itself. The place left no crime scene. Without a conscious mind to dictate reality, it reverted to the simple, featureless plain Ara now occupied. Once Iris Temm was dead and her killer left the Dream, there would be nothing to indicate either person had ever been there.
Or so the murderer probably thought.
Ara closed her eyes and widened her other senses. Delicately she probed at the ground beneath her feet and the air above her head. When Iris Temm had entered the Dream and created an environment for herself, she used the subconscious minds that were closest to her physical body-her neighbors, other Silent, even the more intelligent dinosaurs, if some of the wilder theories about them were correct. Each mind made up a piece of Iris’s Dream. Since Temm had only been dead for an hour or two, most of these people should still be fairly close to her-and to Ara. This meant that Ara’s Dream body now existed in the portion of the Dream created from the same minds that Temm had recently used.
And Ara could hear the echoes.
Each mind Iris Temm had touched from the Dream retained an unconscious memory of the form she had given it, a telepathic recording of what it had been. Ara stretched her own mind outward, listening, feeling, touching.
Duplicating.
Ara was an expert in Dream morphic theory, meaning she had a deep, almost instinctive knowledge of how the Dream was put together. Ara was one of the few human Silent whose touch was delicate enough to recreate what someone else had done. She used that touch now.
The plain warped and changed. Forms writhed upward from the ground and crawled across the sky. A moment later, Ara opened her eyes. An autumn forest stood around her. Gold and scarlet leaves decorated maple and oak trees, and the faint smell of smoke hung on the cool air. It was a relaxing environment with one strange feature-everything was translucent, ghost-like. The trees looked as if Ara might be able to push her hand through them, and the leaves looked like colored tracing paper. This was to be expected. The people whose subconscious minds Temm had used to create her Dream were beginning to forget what they had become for her. Still, it was enough to see what was going on.
Iris Temm herself sat beneath one of the trees talking with another Silent, a lizard-like karill from the Henkarill system. Here, Iris was vibrant and alive, her fair skin smooth instead of bruised, her face animated instead of still. Her movements were graceful and she was very pretty. But Ara could see through her as if she were a ghost.
The voice of the karill was low, and Ara couldn’t make out what it was saying. Ara wondered why Iris called up a Terran forest instead of the talltrees on Bellerophon. Perhaps she had been born on Earth or had spent time there.
Temm and the karill finished their business, and the karill vanished. Ara knew that once in the solid world it would doubtless begin transcribing their session, transferring letters, documents, financial accounts, diplomatic communiques, and other information into electronic or even hard copy. That was the primary function of the Silent, keeping the lines of communication open between planets and systems separated by thousands of light years and weeks of travel. All Children of Irfan were licensed and bonded, with oaths of secrecy not to reveal or share information that passed through their minds and hands. Temm would soon forget what she had seen, in any case. Short-term memory training was an essential part of the Children’s education program, including the 'forget' reflex
